Black & White
by AtlantaNova67
Summary: When Kylo Ren and Rey are forced to rely on each other to survive, so much is called into question. Light and dark battle for dominance when they are left stranded together on an abandoned planet. Will Kylo Ren win his own personal battle to keep the light out? AU. Kylo Ren /Rey. Angst. Romance. Will be updated regularly.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Ever since The Force Awakens was in theaters, I knew Kylo Ren and Rey's past had to be intertwined. I know soon the new movie will be out and of course blast all of my theories out of the water. So this is written in an AU where the new movie doesn't exist and instead my story occurs. I started writing this in April of last year and except for the last few chapters which I'm currently writing, it's complete. My best friend Alatariel4488 is kindly betaing this story for me, so it will be posted when we both find time in our busy schedules. I will never discourage readers from expressing their thoughts and comments on my story, whether positive or negative.**

* * *

There was nothing to see for miles. Just sand that moved on the wind. Howling gales bore down from the north, brushing loose pieces of her hair out of her face. There was no purpose to the force of the wind; there was no storm brewing on the horizon.

She took a deep breath, perfectly timed and measured. She knelt down, the heat from the sun baking her back as she was perched atop the highest sand dune on the horizon, looking out onto nothing. There really was nothing to be seen but miles and miles of sand. At least on Jakku the sand leveled into dusty plains, and eventually, when the sands petered off enough and the wind wasn't harsh, a city would appear on the horizon as a beacon of hope.

In this barren wasteland there was nothing but shifting seas of sand. Every day the landscape changed from the constant breath of the winds.

It was day two.

And there was still not a scrap of human life to be seen. There were no plants, no animals, and she knew from experience that if there was any water buried on the hot, dry surface, it was so far down she'd die trying to reach it.

So she stood at the top of the dune, the wind buffeting her face, knowing that if something didn't happen soon she would be stuck here. And eventually, when her carefully rationed portions of food ran out and the last trickle of water had been drunk, she would die.

But then she had been abandoned on a desert planet before and had survived just fine. The only difference was this time it hadn't been intentional.

She took one last look over the barren landscape and then, putting her back to, it made her way down the dune to where her crashed ship lay in the sand.

She remembered most of what had happened leading up to the crash. Luke had felt a disturbance in the force and had sent Chewbacca in the Falcon to send warning to Leia. He refused to leave the water planet. He felt, with Kylo Ren still on the hunt for him, that staying on the uninhabited planet on the edge of the badlands was the only way to stay out of the way. Let Ren go on a wild goose chase to hunt him down. As long as he was still hunting for Luke and Rey then the resistance would have a chance to rebuild and get the upper hand while the New Order was weak.

But when Chewy never sent word back to them and when the sickly feeling both her and Luke had been feeling grew stronger, she insisted that they go help them. Even when Luke protested that she stay hidden and safe with him, she fired back that she wasn't leaving Finn, Poe, and General Organa to fend for themselves.

Maybe Luke was a tired old man. Maybe he was tired of fighting rebellious students. Or maybe he'd already grown tired of training her and wanted her to leave. Even now, she wasn't sure why he hadn't fought for her to stay. He stayed deathly still even as she demanded action on his part. She'd given up, tired of standing on the sidelines as the eerie feeling stirred in her stomach. So, without even an attempt from Luke to stop her, she took the little ship that had got him to the little water planet in the first place, and dove back into space, headed home to save her friends.

Everything else from that point on, when she tries to remember is blurred and hazy.

She woke in the dark, smoke choking her, the blaring sounds of alarms screaming in the cockpit. She scrambled out of the burning ship as fast as she could but she'd taken a beating in the landing and could barely move. She didn't get the fire out in time to save any of the electrical systems. Her only way of letting anyone know where she was had been a small signal beacon which burnt up with the rest of the ship.

She waited hours for the sun to fade off into the horizon, for night to come and cool air to settle in and give her a relief from the rabid sun. But it never did. The sun stayed in the middle of the sky, blazing so hot that she finally buried as far into the sand as she could to keep the heat off.

She had no idea how long she slept that first 'night'. Her injuries were mostly superficial but there was a dull ache under her ribs and a tick in the back of her mind that told her that things weren't as well as they might seem. There was no way to tell time because the sun didn't shift in the sky. Later, once she had found an old watch in one of the few cargo bins that escaped the flames, she was able to measure time. The fire in the cockpit burnt for two days. There was nothing to stop the flames, the wind wasn't stiff enough to put it out and the blaring sun just encouraged the fire. It burnt until everything but the outer shell and some of the deeper compartments were left.

By then, she was so parched she barely had the strength to pull the environmentally resistant containers out of the cargo hold. She could have drunk gallons and gallons. But there were only two ten gallon containers and a recycler and so she was careful, even though her self-control almost broke and she felt like she could gulp down half a container in one sitting.

It was there, on that night-less planet, that she really came to understand what survival meant. She had been doing it all her life. She had been on her own as long as she could remember, but now, truly alone, truly just surviving, she felt as if the world shifted a little. Her view was suddenly harsher, more focused.

To keep her mind off of the pain in her ribs and the scolding sun at her back, she ran through a mental list of things she needed to do.

She needed to get off this planet, back to Finn, Poe, and eventually Luke. She wanted to finish Kylo Ren's reign of terror. She wasn't sure if she could kill him, but he needed to stop and she felt as if it was her personal mission to end him. The First Order, of course, needed to be stopped. Those were her immediate goals. The ones that burned in the back of her mind like the blinding sun above her.

Maybe it was the sun, or dehydration, or pure desperation, but soon her mind began to wander to other things she wanted so very badly. She wanted to become a Jedi. As she sat in the shade of her crashed ship, she pulled out her sabre. It was heavy and despite the oppressive heat the metal was still cool to the touch. She didn't activate it, just imagined how she would eventually learn to slice it through the air with a meticulous precision.

Her thoughts wandered, the heat catching up to her. She wanted to finally meet her family, if they were even out there. She imagined her mother. Soft eyes and sharp chiseled features that carried a kind, motherly expression. Nothing seemed better than warm arms that would wrap around her in the darkest of times. If she listened closely she could hear her mother's voice on the wind, singing.

She drank some more water and buried farther into the sand, trying to keep the heat at bay and her mind sharp.

She would make it off this god forsaken planet.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Thanks for the response everyone. Here's the next chapter. Please let me know what you think by leaving me a review or favorite/follow the story.**

* * *

It was on the third day of no night and no rest from the scorching sun, that she noticed the marks. She was sliding down from the top of the sand dune again when she noticed them. She slid to a stop a few feet from the ship and trudged through the sand to the bow.

Dark, angry marks, as tall as she was and nearly twice her height in width, marked the belly and sides of the little x-class flyer. Blaster shots.

It made sense that she had been shot down. It was to the back end of the ship so whoever had attacked her would have been behind her. She started pulling off pieces of paneling, determined to find out why she hadn't seen them coming. She found it only a few minutes in; the corroded wires obvious to anyone with half a brain. Who knows how long that ship had sat in the salty caves that Luke had kept it in. She mentally chastised herself. If she had just slowed down and taken her time she probably would have found the faulty sensor.

No wonder she had no recollection of the crash. She had been blindsided. The first blow probably knocked her unconscious and then, as the systems failed and there had been no conscious pilot to correct the dying ship, it had plummeted, getting caught in the atmosphere. It was sheer chance that she had survived the impact.

Luke was stranded on the water planet; she had taken his only means of transportation. He might know that there was something wrong by this point, but there was no way he would be able to do anything about it. And who knows how the others were fairing when nothing had been heard from them in weeks. She was truly stranded. No way to respond, no way signal for help. And if she was stuck in the Badlands like she believed she was, then there was no way anyone would come to look for her. The badlands were called that for a reason. Only the runaways and the lost wandered into the badlands and even fewer ever made it out.

That meant that the only people out there, if they were even still around, were the people who shot her down. But that had happened days ago, they were most likely on the other side of the galaxy by now.

She sat down in the sand, exhausted. She had taken some of the gauze from her arms and wrapped it around the more sensitive skin of her neck to keep the sun off. She had grown up in the desert, but even the desert had night. This hellhole never seemed to stop burning.

It became clear then that she would need to start thinking about packing up her water and food in an attempt to find something besides sand. Maybe there were more downed ships. Maybe there was water. Her provisions were slowly disappearing from their containers and that dull feeling underneath her ribs was slowly being replaced with worry. She didn't have the time or resources to stay here any longer.

Yet again her focused shifted. She had a purpose. Find shelter.

* * *

It was day five. She had taken her fourth day on the fire planet (as she fondly called it in her head) to pack up her gear, find a way to easily transport her water, and scour the ship for anything that the fire, sand, and wind hadn't already destroyed. She wrapped it all in an emergency blanket and some rope and made a pack.

The inside of the ship had finally cooled enough from the fire that she could venture inside. She used more of the blankets that had been saved by the containers to make a small bed and she finally was able to sleep somewhat well after three nights of sleeping in the sand and the scorching heat of the sun.

When her little watch sounded that it was 'dawn', she grabbed her bags and abandoned ship.

She climbed to the top of the sand dune. There was no sense of direction when the sun was beating on her from above, in the same position it had been since she'd arrived. There was no distant shape or goal to works toward. It was just an infinity of sand. It would be so easy to be swallowed up by it. She knew as soon as she topped two or three ridges, she would no longer be able to tell if she was still heading in the same direction. It all looked the same. It all moved with the wind.

She closed her eyes.

Luke had not been able to teach her much. They had only had a few weeks together. But it was enough to know that here in this vast landscape, with no distractions, no people, only her and the wind and the sand, the force would be strong.

She pushed back the thirst and hunger she felt and she focused on something much more primal. She could feel it. The wind seemed to quiet for a moment, the beating heat of the sun fading until she could no longer feel the burn. She likened the feel of it to the hum of a generator. A soft, comforting feeling, but that softness was deceptively powerful. It grounded her and she reveled in the focus it gave her. She felt some of her strength come back as she sought it out with her mind.

Her eyes snapped open. There. She would walk in what she would call 'east'. The name gave no clue to her actual direction. But it was enough; the soft vibe of the force would be her guide.

She slid down the dune and kept her eyes on the horizon, all the while praying the force wouldn't let her down.

* * *

Day 6.

She knew she was hallucinating. She kept seeing a figure walking in front of her. He was clad in a Jedi cloak, just as Luke had been. The figure never turned around. It just marched in stride with her twenty paces ahead. She could run and the figure would begin to run. She could stop and the figure would stop.

She tried changing directions. But as soon as she did, her mirage would stop and the force, which was her only compass in the nothingness, would nag her gut that she was headed the wrong way. It would grow to the point where her stomach was so tied up in knots that she would have no choice but to return to her original path. Her mirage would still be there, waiting patiently on the dune where she had deviated and, once she was back on track, he would again take the lead.

At one point, she just started yelling at it. It marched on. She sang to it. Nothing changed. She drowned it in silence. Still nothing.

She decided it was dehydration. Or maybe it was the exhaustion. But she finally stopped trying to figure it out, and just followed it in the sand, letting it lead her east at a tireless pace.

* * *

Day 7.

The figure was still there, even more frequently than before. The water was nearly gone. There was still sand for as far as the eye could see. Nothing changed.

Her clothes, though they were designed for the desert, did nothing to cool her or keep the sand from finding crevices and wearing her skin raw.

She had red blisters everywhere. The sun created them on her skin. The sand created them when she walked. Her lips were swollen and bleeding. Her feet were long past saving against the scorching sand. The straps of her make-shift pack dug long, raw lines into her shoulders.

She imagined it was Luke who was making her walk. That this was the physical part of the training he'd been talking about. She imagined he was there, pushing her to walk faster and harder and to feel the pain less.

It didn't help.

She started humming at some point the scavenger songs of the Jakku people as she hiked through the shifting sands and slid down the backs of the dunes.

She walked on endlessly. The fire planet tortured her for her troubles.

* * *

Day 8.

The Jedi figure slowed his pace; she followed suit, internally grateful for his mercy.

She named him Walker (since that's all he did was walk) in a small attempt at humor.

It wasn't funny.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Thanks again for the response. Please let me know what you think of the new developments in the story.**

Day 9.

She figured she had one day of water left. She'd been walking for four days. She could probably walk one day without water before she finally gave into dehydration and exhaustion.

After that she didn't know what she would do.

Die, she supposed. The wind would bury her quickly. No one would ever find her. She tried not to think about that too much. The idea of not seeing Finn or Leia or really any of the people she was just starting to make a sort of family with, made her want to lie down in the sand and cry. She knew if she stopped for longer than a few minutes she wouldn't get back up again.

So she kept walking.

She felt it before she saw it.

The wind shifted and a startled feeling washed over her, the first thing she'd felt besides fear and hopelessness in days. The pain that had been hovering behind her ribs, which she had mistaken for some kind of internal injury, squirmed and, for the first time since she landed on this planet, she wished she had realized what she had been feeling.

Darkness. She could feel it more prominently now; the raw sickly feeling crept over her skin.

People were scared and dying. She could sense them; barely make them out, like a shadow in her peripheral vision. She spun in a circle, searching.

The thunder from above caught her attention and she watched in shock as a ship, five times as big as her own, broke atmosphere.

The entire earth beneath her shook.

The ship was not attempting to land. It hurtled through the sky like a falling star, ablaze, huge pieces of it coming off on entry. It was massive; billows of smoke poured out of it and, as it fell to the ground, time seemed to slow down. Its roar was deafening as the machine plummeted towards the planet and she covered her ears in an attempt to block out the sound. Wounded, it blinked out of sight behind a dune.

The impact shook the ground, sand billowing up and knocking her off her feet. It took her a moment to realize what was happening, that the crash had caused a shock wave. Her Jedi friend, who she'd forgotten about in the moment, suddenly bolted. She blinked, trying to process what was happening. A shock wave was billowing out from the crashed ship, hurtling across the dunes, picking up sand and making a dark line that was raging its way down towards her. She followed her mirage with her eyes down the dune. And then she started to run as fast as she could, her brain finally catching up and realizing that if she got caught in the darkness, she would die.

The Jedi figure paused at the bottom of the dune as if waiting for her, priceless seconds passing by. She gained ground on the figure for the first time in days. He was waiting for her, arm held out. She didn't hesitate, grasping him the moment she hit the bottom. He shoved her into the ground, with a force no mirage could ever manage and before she could contemplate how that was even possible the shock wave hit. His firm figure protected her from the brunt of the shock. She was buried in an avalanche of sand as it cascaded over her. She choked, flailing in the sand to cover her mouth and eyes with her shirt. The sand piled in around her, weighing down on her, making it impossible breathe.

She must have blacked out, because she woke with a jerk and immediately began to gasp for air, only getting a mouthful of sand in the process. She dug frantically and finally broke through, coughing up sand and gasping for air at the same time. It took her a moment to realize that the figure, her mirage, was gone.

She felt around but the Jedi was nowhere to be seen. She waited for him to uncover himself from the sand, gasping for air much like she had. But nothing happened. No figure. No mirage.

So many things ran through her mind. Questions about who the figure was and how he'd saved her and if he'd ever been there in there first place, raced through her mind. She wondered how far gone she had to be for her hallucination to feel physically real.

The plume of smoke that rose over the top of the sand dune caught her attention, pulling her thoughts away.

She glanced around one more time for her mysterious figure before deciding the ship was a more pressing concern. She dredged back up the sand dune towards the fallen ship, a new assortment of bruises making themselves known on the way up.

It took her close to an hour to trudge through the sand and climb the sand dunes between her and the ship. If there had been no sand in her way it wouldn't have taken more than five minutes to get there, but she was exhausted, and it was well past the point when she would normally stop and rest for the 'night.'

The ship was a wreck.

Burnt ash, debris, and charred metal were scattered and ablaze atop the sand.

People are screaming and that feeling which had first told her that people were hurting, nearly paralyzes her with intensity.

She runs towards the ship, the intense heat of the flames scorching her. The outer hull is quickly burning itself out but the only entrance (a gaping hole in the side of the ship) is boiling with black, acrid smoke. She chokes, quickly pulling the gauze material tight around her face.

Screams of terror and coughing reach her but they are slowly fading and there's only one option. She either lets them die or she runs into that blazing inferno and tries and help. The choice is black and white.

She drops her pack, in hopes that the water and food will still be there if she manages to come back out and dives in before she loses what little courage she has left.

There's a blazing fire just inside the hole and she manages to get through it fairly unsigned, but it's the smoke that takes a toll. She accidentally gets a mouth full of the black fumes and it burns her throat and lungs.

The screaming is getting fainter and she runs through the halls, calling out for anyone that can respond.

She can barely see, but she can't miss the tell-tell black and white suits of stormtroopers. She stumbles over debris and bodies that are long dead in the crash. Her eyes won't stop tearing up and she keeps wiping at her face, trying to clear her vision so she can see.

She hears a voice calling out and she runs, not caring at all that these are the foes she's been preparing to fight for months. Right now, they are just people. Dying, hurting human beings that deserve to live. She skids to a halt, reaching a trooper that's obviously in agony.

"Where are you hurt?" She drops to her knees instantly, already pulling his helmet off and trying to get a good look at what's happened to him.

He makes a harsh coughing sound and sags. She is too late and he's already gone. She drops his helmet in shock, stumbling back. He's got a nice face, she thinks. Taking in his handsome features, she is sick at the irony that only a week ago she would have purposely ended his life for the sake of her cause and yet now when he was dead at her feet she could only feel remorse.

Another voice rises from farther in the belly of the ship and with one glance back at the man she'd lost she runs farther into the smoke. The ship is a maze, and the smoke claws at her throat and makes her vision burn so that she can barely see a few feet in front her. Her run slowly dissipates into an agonizing, stumbling trot.

It must be more than smoke, she realizes, long spoken words from Finn coming back to her about how the masks filter out smoke, but not poison. The smoke must carry something toxic in the air. It explains why suddenly she's struggling so much to breathe and why her lungs feel as if they've got weights attached and every breath is excruciating.

There had been a voice yelling for help, a single voice, but even now that's been silenced. Only alarms and the thunder of the blaze behind her are left.

She rounds a corner to find a burning mound and she blinks hard, knowing now it's not the smoke but in fact tears, because she's come too late and whoever it was that was crying out, is no longer with her.

She turns, sick, the smoke and smell making her nauseous and dizzy. In a panic to get away, she stumbles hard over a piece of steel in the hall and fumbles to catch herself. The fall knocks the wind out of her and she's lost in a coughing fit, adrenaline fading quickly. She's not sure if she has the energy to stand and drag herself out of this burning mess.

She closes her eyes in an attempt to make them stop watering and as she lies there in the dark. The blaring alarms fade out and she can feel her consciousness fading in and out. The poison air finally getting to her lungs. Her eyes are closed and all she can see is darkness and she listens to the pounding of her frantic heart beat as she struggles to breathe and find the will to rise from the rubble. There in the dark, she feels something that she hasn't felt since that night in the snow.

Her eyes snap open.

She knows he's alive. She can sense it.

She struggles to her feet, letting the darkness that's coiling in her stomach guide her. It's not much farther into the belly of the ship when she stops, realizing that he's behind the door at her right. She breaks off the paneling by the door and takes a jab at the emergency release. The door squeals, opening with surprising speed.

She enters the room. The door may have opened smoothly, but the structural integrity of the room is practically destroyed, beams from the ceiling blocking most of her view.

But she sees him there, lying in the dark, as always, shrouded in black clothing and that ridiculous helmet.

He's lying motionless, and she already knows he's alive but she checks anyway, reaching down for his neck to feel for a pulse.

His heart is beating faintly, but steadily.

There is a moment when she considers letting him die from whatever acrid smoke that is now filling the room, or to let the fires eventually consume him. But there's always the chance he could wake up and escape. Keep your enemies closer, is how the old saying goes. She makes a snap decision. She'd dove into this dying heap to save the passengers and even Kylo Ren didn't deserve to die. She can't get over the irony.

Of course it's him.

Of course, of all the people to be alive (and he's the only one, she can tell) it would be him.

There is an indentation in his helmet and she can tell the ceiling support had come down on him. It's that stupid mask. It's probably the only thing that saved him.

It's in her hands whether or not she should save him. It should be black and white. She either lets the man who's been hunting her die or she saves him, here and now. But the answer is not black and white but a fuzzy shade of gray. She finally decides that she'll be dead in about three days anyway, so it won't make a difference.

It's the hardest thing she's ever done. Making the decision to pull him out of the burning ship is by far the most difficult she's ever made. The gas is pouring in and it won't take long before it chokes her until she can no longer breathe. Time is of the essence. She is deep in the belly of the ship. Kylo Ren doesn't look as if he will wake any time soon and she wouldn't have the strength at her best, let alone after days in the desert, to carry him.

Which is why she decides that the only choice she has is to levitate him out.

She rises from kneeling beside him, aware that with every labored breath she takes, the weaker she becomes and the heavier he will feel.

She looks him over, sizing him up. The biggest thing she had ever lifted with Luke were some small rocks for a couple of seconds. He is giant, long arms and legs looking enormous.

She closes her eyes.

The hum is faint but there, winding around her like a warm wind. She pulls on it, begging for strength, trying to find the right mindset as Luke had taught her. The alarms and racket of the dying ship fade and the pain of her lungs and body slowly slip away. She feels for him in the dark, reaching out, his darkness making his form even heavier. A mental dead weight. She envisions picking him up and the weight increases, her knees aching. She thrust out an arm, trying to lift him.

She cries out. The pain is so achingly terrible. The force trembles around her, building to give her the strength she needs.

She opens her eyes and the blaring sounds of the ship alarms and the fire come roaring back in, making her flinch. Ren is hovering several feet off the ground. It is enough.

She pulls him to her, struggling. He is so heavy and she feels her lungs shuddering and she begins to wheeze. Time passes so slowly as she manages to direct him out of the room and into the halls, pushing him ahead of her.

He wants to sink lower and she struggles to keep him in the air, her hands shaking. She is pushing a mountain, a dark, terrifying, mountain sized weight. She can finally see the light of the exit and with one terrific shove she pushes him through the flames as quickly as possible, and he crumples in a pile in the sand just outside of the gaping hole in the ship. She is out in the scorching sun again. She rips the linens off of her face and heaves in real air.

She grabs his feet and drags him a few more feet away from the wreckage and then collapses herself, closing her eyes in exhaustion, coughing like an old smoker.

She had never hated anyone before in her life. She didn't hate her parents for abandoning her, simply wanted to know why. But as she lies on the ground, the scorching sun of the fire planet blistering her yet again and the stench of burning flesh seared in her brain, she thinks, for the first time, she knows what it means to hate someone.

She glances over at the black clad figure beside her. She can't move her limbs out of exhaustion. The world around her is getting darker and she knows she's going to lose consciousness any second because darkness has never touched this planet. But she knows one thing, as her mind slowly shuts down.

She hates Kylo Ren.


End file.
